Vincenzo Dito and daughter Rosetta Costantino tend to the peppers in her Oakland backyard garden, which is filled with the plants grown from the seeds from their Italian homeland, Calabria.

Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle

Vincenzo Dito and daughter Rosetta Costantino tend to the peppers...

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San Marzano tomatoes and their dried seeds, which are kept for next season.

Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle

San Marzano tomatoes and their dried seeds, which are kept for next...

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Prickly pears.

Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle

Prickly pears.

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Vincenzo Dito moved to the states in 1974 and has keep gardens or farmland his whole life. Rosetta Cosentino and her father Vincenzo Dito grow heritage crops as a way to preserve their cultural foodways and keep them connected to their homeland of Calabria. Oakland, CA, Tuesday October 23rd, 2012

Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle

Vincenzo Dito moved to the states in 1974 and has keep gardens or...

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Pesca Sanguina or Red Blood Peaches are seen on the tree in Vincenzo's garden. Rosetta Cosentino and her father Vincenzo Dito grow heritage crops as a way to preserve their cultural foodways and keep them connected to their homeland of Calabria. Oakland, CA, Tuesday October 23rd, 2012

This is the fifth in an occasional series on farmers and gardeners working to preserve their cultural foodways by growing heritage crops in the Bay Area.

Vicenzo and Maria Dito and their teenage daughter Rosetta left Calabria - the toe of the Italian boot - in 1974, knowing life in America would mean trade-offs: greater economic opportunities than in their isolated, hardscrabble homeland, but less for their kitchen in American stores.

The Ditos couldn't bring along their dairy goats, vineyards or olive trees, but they took the seeds of their tomatoes and peppers, beans, greens and herbs.

"Pretty much everything came over on that first trip," Rosetta Costantino recalled. Some of those heirloom varieties are now available from Franchi Seeds; back then, they could only be found in Calabria.

Today, Costantino keeps those plant lines going in the garden behind her Italianate home in the Oakland hills; her parents' garden is a short walk away.

After a successful high-tech career, Costantino has become a custodian of Calabrian foodways, with her classes, culinary tours and cookbooks: "My Calabria" (W.W. Norton and Co.; 2010), co-authored with Chronicle contributor Janet Fletcher, and "Southern Italian Desserts" (Ten Speed Press), due out in October.

Peppered with peppers

When we visited, the eggplant and tomato seasons were winding down, but the garden was still festooned with peppers.

The hot varieties grow in pots. Costantino introduced them: "These little devils are small and short; these long ones are really hot; the medium grade is larger. They don't taste like anything you can buy. We just know them as Calabrian hot peppers."

She and her family dry the larger sweet peppers in the sun and crush them into paprika: "People ask for the seeds from all over the world." Linda and Steven Butler grow them for restaurants, notably Berkeley's Gather, at their Lindencroft Farm near Ben Lomond (Santa Cruz County).

For the San Marzanos, Vicenzo Dito built a Great Wall of Tomatoes using leftover PVC pipe: "Nothing is sitting on the ground, so there's nothing to go rotten. We remove all the suckers, so all the energy goes into the fruit. Every single tomato sets."

Most of the San Marzanos are canned, 150 pounds' worth last season. The Oxheart tomatoes go into salads.

Long Italian eggplants thrive in their eastern exposure. We asked Costantino if she salted them, as recipes often specify, to mute their bitterness.

"There's no such thing as a bitter eggplant," she countered. "These are mild and sweet. The problem is that people buy them after they've been sitting around forever."

Sweet red onions from Tropea are unearthed and hung in trees so they won't sprout. A profusion of greens includes a cross between kale and broccoli rabe variously called spigariello and cavolo broccolo: "Different towns have different names." It's a cut-and-come-again vegetable, best sauteed in oil and garlic.

She grows more exotic things as well, like a grafted blood peach from Calabria: "It doesn't ripen until Thanksgiving. The flesh is red like a blood orange, tart and sweet."

'Nowhere else'

In pots she grows an herb called black anise. "It only grows in certain parts of Calabria - nowhere else in the world. We use it in cookies and chocolates, or grind the seed and sprinkle it on pasta or in sauce for a burst of flavor." The black seed has an intense licorice aroma and taste, augmented by deep-brown notes like coffee. Wild fennel? "We don't bother to grow that. That's something we forage."

Not surprisingly, dinner often comes from the two gardens: "The pantry is always loaded with our stuff. We preserve a lot during summer: Can the tomatoes, sun-dry the zucchini and preserve it under oil."

The Ditos stay active in both gardens. "They know how to treat the soil, when to water, when to plant," said their daughter.

"They always used to prune the vineyard by moon cycles, something that goes back to the Greeks and Romans. They know when a plant looks sick. My father was raised that way and remembers everything. He didn't have to go to agricultural school."

She showed us his zappa, a short forked hoe he brought with him: "It's sacred, and he still uses it." It's all done organically, with fertilizer from a goat farm, just like home's. Gardening in America required some adjustment but, "California, Calabria: same weather," said Vicenzo.

It seems those skills will be passed along. Costantino's teenage son Adrian has the family green thumb: "He spends a lot of time with his granddad in the gardens and is learning a lot from him so he can carry on some of the traditions," Costantino said. "And he's a good little chef."